ROUNDTABLE: Small-State Responses to Covid-19

At the beginning of 2022, as the world entered the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, over 307 million confirmed cases and 5.5 million confirmed deaths had been recorded globally—numbers smaller than the actual figures due to limitations both on testing and on attributing causes of deaths to the virus.1 Even as progress is seemingly made against Covid-19's silent threat through the rapid development and circulation of vaccines and medical treatments, preventive measures, and an increasingly better scientific understanding of the virus, each successive wave of the pandemic has brought new challenges and uncertainty to the fore of the public policy agenda in every part of the world.

The Indo-Pacific is no exception to Covid-19's social and economic destruction, and the region has rarely left the headlines. From the virus's initial outbreak in China, to its disruptive impacts on not only the Olympics but also political leadership in Japan, to the tragedy of the Delta variant collapsing India's healthcare system, to supply chain disturbances throughout the Pacific, each country in the region has experienced and coped with the pandemic in its own way. As Covid-19 variants sweep around the world, healthcare diplomacy has become a global policy focus, one involving the distribution of masks, healthcare supplies, and vaccines both among developed states and between them and developing ones. The crisis has shined a light on resource inequities and competition, but at the same time it has also led to unprecedented demonstrations of generosity, scientific development, and cooperation.

The larger countries in the Indo-Pacific have received the lion's share of resources and media attention. Less visibly, the region's smaller and developing states have also seen their governance and public health systems unduly tested by the Covid-19 pandemic. This Asia Policy roundtable examines the government, public health, societal, economic, and international responses in some of these smaller states that are often outside the public spotlight. How have they responded to the pandemic? What prognoses do they face for overcoming the pandemic's challenges and returning to a more normal social and economic life? Essays in this roundtable address these questions and country-specific policy issues for Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. [End Page 2]